Sunday, July 19, 2009

Sunday Burst of Weirdness

Oddities abound!

:: OK, this may not be safe for work, owing to the subject matter; or maybe it is, owing to the fact that it pertains to the animal kingdom. But...well, you learn something everyday. It turns out that humans are far from the only creatures who -- oh, how shall we put this -- are not always the masters of their domain.

:: When I heard that Futurama was coming back, and that it was going to be on Comedy Central, I thought, "Great! Now FOX can't screw with the show anymore! Yay!!!"

Unfortunately, it turns out that FOX still owns the damn show, and it further turns out that FOX doesn't much want to give the voice actors on the show a raise, so they've issued a casting call for replacement voices.

I never tire of this quote, from Jon Lovitz (uttered on Letterman a decade ago when FOX canceled his animated show The Critic): "FOX -- they should spell it with a 'U'."

:: If you've done a lot of Interstate Highway driving in your life, you remember ubiquitous "Rest Areas" -- little places where you'd pull off to relieve yourself, maybe grab a can of pop from a vending machine, walk the dog if you had one, and generally just get out of the car for a few minutes. They were small affairs -- a building with bathrooms and a place to grab pamphlets on local tourist attractions, and a grassy area with a few picnic benches behind it, and that was it. Certainly unlike today's Rest Areas, with giant gas stations, gift shops, and buildings full of two or three fast food restaurants.

The old rest areas are disappearing into history. I'm not sure if that saddens me or not, but there it is.

More next week!

1 comment:

Thee Earl of Obvious said...

I don't understand why animated movies and TV shows use celebrity voices anyway. Why did they feel the need to use the woman from that horrendous but very sucessful show "Married with Children" as a voice? Did they really think her voice was so significant that they turned a blind eye to the fact that she would quickly be demanding higher pay?

We watch Clifford the Big Red Dog daily here. Why was it necessary to use the voice of the late John Ritter? Again, the price is going to be prohibitive sooner or later as the actor and their agent will be basing compensation on mostly irrelevant star quality.


If you consider all of the out of work actors out there, why does John Leguizamo (sp?) have to be the voice of Perry the narcoleptic tree frog? Is this really what brings people to the see the movie? Or is it just the workings of a union striking a deal for the elite in the food chain?